UNITED NATIONS - / MaximsNews Network / 27
May 2009 - Milan - The
GAVI
Alliance,
the Humanitas
Research Foundation, along
with health experts, scientists and NGO leaders last
month marked the European Day of Immunology with an urgent appeal to the
world's eight most powerful nations, "Children Must Not Pay for Global
Financial Crisis" - put vaccine programmes firmly on the global agenda
for the upcoming G8 summit to be hosted by Italy in July.
Professor
Alberto Mantovani, Chairman of the Humanitas
Research Foundation, and Dr Julian Lob-Levyt, CEO of the GAVI
Alliance, urged the G8 to further invest in global health at a time of
global economic downturn.
Speaking
at a high-level conference, “Immunology,
economics and solidarity for global health,” and
organized by GAVI Alliance, the Humanitas Research Foundation and under the
patronage of the Italian Ministry of Finance, they urged support for
scientific advances for life-saving vaccines for the world's poorest children.
“The
financial crisis represents a major threat to improvements that poor countries
are making in their healthcare systems. But the world’s most vulnerable must
not be the victims of the current economic downturn,” said Dr Lob-Levyt.
“Unless
more resources are found, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) will not be
met and the world’s economic leaders will have failed to fulfill ambitious
promises made at previous summits,” he said.
Professor
Mantovani, who is also a lecturer at Milan University, added, “The next G8
summit in July will offer the world’s power-brokers a major opportunity to
influence future collective action in global health. They must define
strategies to maintain progress made in improving health conditions and which
measures to take to achieve the MDGs by 2015.”
Dr.
Mantovani also pointed out that immunisation is one of the most cost-effective
investments to decrease poverty and prevent longer term economic and social
costs.
“How
can governments spend trillions of dollars to save their banks and ignore the
plight of children who are dying from preventable diseases in developing
countries? If the G8 leaders do not act now, we will not just face a financial
bankruptcy, but a moral bankruptcy and world leaders will not be able to claim
they did not know better,” Dr Lob-Levyt added.
Other
conference speakers included Vittorio Grilli, Director-General of the
Treasury, Ministry of Economy and Finance, Rino Rappuoli, Vice-President of
vaccine research at Novartis, and Giovanni Pianosi, Head of the International
Cooperation Group of “Les Cultures”.
“Scientific
research, civil society and economics have joined forces under GAVI’s
banner,” Dr. Mantovani explained. “The work undertaken by GAVI, a
public-private partnership, helps make the vision of vaccinating all children
in developing countries a reality. Thanks to GAVI and its
partners, underused and new vaccines such as the rotavirus vaccine are being
made available to the world’s most vulnerable children.”
In its
nine year existence, the GAVI Alliance has concentrated on rolling out
existing and underused vaccines to poor countries and strengthening health
systems. It is now ramping up efforts to provide support for new generation
vaccines against pneumococcal and rotavirus.
Last
month, the Alliance celebrated with the government of Rwanda the first
introduction of a pneumococcal vaccine in a developing country.
Pneumococcal
diseases, which cause meningitis and pneumonia, currently kill more than 1.6
million people worldwide each year, including at least 800,000 children, most
of which occur in the world’s poorest countries.
A
group of committed donors, led by the Italian government, have ensured the
long-term sustainable supply of pneumoccocal vaccine for poor countries
through an innovative financing mechanism called Advanced
Market Commitments (AMC).
Through
an AMC, donors commit money to guarantee the price of vaccines once they have
been developed, thus creating the potential for a viable future market. These
commitments provide vaccine makers with the incentive to invest the
considerable sums required to conduct research and build and allocate
manufacturing capacity.
In
return, they commit to a legally binding price that is affordable for
developing countries. In just a few months, GAVI will begin implementing the
first AMC: a pilot against pneumococcal disease.
The
Italian government also supports GAVI’s International
Finance Facility for Immunisation (IFFIm), which
raises money for immunisation on private bond markets.
“Italy
is a world leader in innovative financing for health,” said Dr. Lob-Levyt.
“It is the most important donor to the AMC and a major IFFIm supporter.”
Support
from the Italian government to GAVI amounts to more than US$ 1 billion over a
period of 20 years.
The
GAVI Alliance is a
Geneva-based public-private partnership aimed at improving health in the
world’s poorest countries. The Alliance brings together developing country
and donor governments, the World Health Organization, UNICEF, the World Bank,
the vaccine industry in both industrialized and developing countries, research
and technical agencies, NGOs, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and
other private philanthropists.
GAVI
support consists of providing life-saving vaccines and strengthening health
systems. Since 2000, 213 million children have been vaccinated and 3.4 million
premature deaths averted thanks to GAVI-funded programmes. GAVI has also been
recognised for developing innovative financing mechanisms like the
International Finance Facility for Immunisation (IFFIm) and the Advance Market
Commitments. For more information, please visit: www.gavialliance.org
